His tail drops between his legs.
“It’s fine, buddy, I’ll just be a second.”
He gives me the “are you sure?” look.
I grin at the towering canine as I walk back over to him. I crouch in front of him and he starts to lick my face. “Listen, that pig in there isn’t going to eat itself. Go bother Sam about it or hell, take the pig right off the table if you want.”
His head twists to the right as he looks at me curiously.
“Kidding, don’t do that. I’ll be right back, so save me a plate.”
I turn back to the blacksmith’s shop just as Brunas walks out, sweat dripping from his face.
“Is there food yet?” he asks.
“There is,” I call to him, “but before we go and check that out … ”
I unsheathe my Splintered Sword and turn it inward so it gleams in his direction. Brunas smacks his big hand across his forehead and wipes some grimy sweat away. “So it is possible, then.” He says, his eyes suddenly filled with awe.
“It is indeed possible.”
The stocky man laughs. “Ha! I guess I was wrong, and I guess you’re not here to show off your busted sword, are you?”
“Nope,” I tell him. “I’m here to collect on a promise.”
“Well, I told you I’d give you service for life if you could prove me wrong, and you’ve definitely proved me wrong. Let me take a look at it.”
Brunas approaches me and I hand him the weapon by turning the hilt to the side, extending my arm, and placing the blade across it.
He takes a step back, swings it, and twists it a few times. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s not bad. It’s really not too bad. So what do you want done to it?”
My smile hardens. “I need you to make it sharper, better, stronger – and I don’t want its style, shape, or overall weight to change.”
He considers this for a moment.
“Well? Do you think you could do it?”
“I reckon I could take a look at it,” he says, smiling at me with his big, bushy eyebrows. “Sure, Oric, I’ll get it fixed up, but it’ll take me a day. You have a little time, don’t you?”
The blood-red sky above leads me to believe otherwise.
“I have time, but not as much as I’d like,” I finally tell him. “Tomorrow, I’m planning to go back to the mainland and head north from there.”
“Tomorrow, huh?” He admires the weapon again, turning the blade in his hands. “Fine, fine. I’ll get it done today and tonight.” He takes my Splintered Sword into his shop and sets it down. “But first we feast.”
Brunas joins me and together we walk back to the courtyard, just in time to find Governor Talonas giving a toast.
“May this world see new warrior heroes,” the governor says, looking from Sam to me, “and may these warrior heroes rise to the occasion, go where no warrior has gone before. May these warrior heroes stop the inevitable, and if they are unable to, may they at least give us a few, final peaceful moments with our loved ones. But for now, let the festivities begin!”
The end.
Thanks for reading, and please leave a review! Book Two and Three will be released in the coming months.
REVIEW DRIVE! The Last Warrior of Unigaea
It’s launch month, and I need your help getting reviews up for this new trilogy. Yes, two more books to come, and I plan to get them out this year (aka 2017). To thank you for your time, after you’ve reviewed this book, I’ll send you a copy of Fantasy Online Hyperborea, which is linked to Last Warrior! Also available on Kindle Unlimited here.
To get Fantasy Online for FREE
1) Click here to REVIEW The Last Warrior of Unigaea
2) Email me [email protected]
3) Get your free e-book, 500 pages of JRPG fantasy craziness!
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Back of the Book Shit
Reader,
Glad you finished the book! I plan to release the second and third part of the Last Warrior trilogy over the next few months (fall 2017) so stay tuned and tuned stay. The second book will be called, The Dracha Killers and the third book will be called, The Red Plague.
The Last Warrior of Unigaea is related to my other works, which I will detail in the section below. For starters, you should know the timeline of my series (all links go to Amazon):
Year 2058 – The Feedback Loop series
Year 2069 – The Last Warrior of Unigaea Trilogy
Year 2075 – Fantasy Online series
Year 2083 – Life is a Beautiful Thing (cyberpunk series)
The Proxima Galaxy
Like all galaxies, the Proxima Galaxy expands with this book. The Proxima Galaxy is the name for the galaxy that holds all the Proxima worlds, worlds like Unigaea. In this book, I mention Tritania, a JRPG fantasy world used in the Feedback Loop and the Fantasy Online series; Cyber Noir, a gritty futuristic noir world used in The Feedback Loop; and Steam, a rules-heavy steampunk world used in The Feedback Loop and in a work I’ll publish next year starring Sam Raid.
As I will continue to say, most of my books are connected through the Proxima Galaxy in some way. Regardless of the order in which you read them, I have written these series in a way that I hope doesn’t require too much knowledge of what has been written in the past. That said, reading the other books will greatly expand your personal knowledge of the connections and the little tidbits that make this kind of world-building so much fun!
Direct connections between this book and my other series
Oric is briefly mentioned in Fantasy Online Hyperborea, which is out now. This mention comes in chapter 22, in which the main characters of that book meet Arun and Chantrea, the gnomes Oric met in chapter nine of this book.
Oric and Wolf also appear in the second book in that series, Fantasy Online Polynya, which will be released fall 2017. You’ll definitely want to see what has become of them (Remember, this is 6 years later), so be sure to get started on Fantasy Online Hyperborea!
Sam Raid, is mentioned in The Feedback Loop book seven, Proxima Riven. Through her smuggling and general badassery, Sam is responsible for helping the main characters of that book retrieve Steamsuits, which are steam-based mech/exoskeleton suits. Sam Raid will also be the star of a LitRPG Space Opera I intend to publish in the spring of 2018 entitled Imperium and Beyond. Look for it!
Facts about Unigaea
Every city in Unigaea is named after an old world currency. So Tin Ingot, Karuna, Ducat, etc., are all world currencies that have been used in the past.
The idea of an online world in which death is final came to me after playing the intro to Nier Automata. In this game, you aren’t able to save until about an hour or more into the action. If you die, you start over completely. I hated/loved this, especially after dying three times, and thought it’d make a great structure for a Proxima World.
The concept of a “Solar Mage” came from Eric Nylund, who is the first to my knowledge to use the Solar Mage class in his great book, Hero of Thera. I took inspiration from that, added a little Jubilee from X-Men, 2B from Neir Automata, and ran with it to create Deathdale.
As a visual thing, this series shares the “Critical Hit!” and “Instakill!” with Fantasy Online Hyperborea. I did this because the two series are related, and it adds a dash of color to reading the book on a e-reader.
APPRECIATION
Thanks to all that have made this book better, starting with Allison Wright, my editor for this series. To Luke Chmilenko, author of the Ascend Online series, I can’t thank you enough for working out a bit of the math that for the HP recovery rate. Math and I have ne
ver been bedfellows, and seriously folks, if you haven’t checked out Luke’s series, it is a LitRPG classic.
Here’s the link to get it!
To my supporters and readers, I can’t thank you enough for encouraging me and reading the hell out of my works. To my author-buddies, especially Apollos Thorne, thanks for hashing all this stuff out with me on a damn near daily basis!
To you, reader. I hope you enjoyed this book and please review it as soon as you get the chance. I’m glad you signed on to the Proxima Galaxy, and I encourage you to keep reading the other books written in the galaxy!
Yours in sanity,
Harmon Cooper
[email protected]
P.S. Continue on for a preview of Fantasy Online Hyperborea!
Fantasy Online Hyperborea (preview)
Nineteen-year-old Ryuk Matsuzaki and his best friend Tamana decide to start over with new avatars. When Tamana is suddenly killed right in front of him in a Tokyo subway, Ryuk knows there is only one place he can search for answers –Tritania, the world’s most popular online fantasy world. Standing in his way are a mysterious guild known as the Shinigami, and his older brother, a Yakuza crime lord hell-bent on squashing his dreams.
As a lowly Ballistics Mage, Ryuk must quickly recruit guild members, level up, loot and shoot his way across Tritania to discover the dark and sinister secret behind Tamana’s untimely death. Joining him in his quest are a famous Swedish gamer, a powerful half-dragon half-human female assassin, and a devious ax-wielding goblin.
Out now!
Prologue: Troll Battles
At half the length of her body, Tamana’s buster sword is meant to be held with both hands, to be used as both a shield and a weapon, but she’s never been one to do things in a conventional way. She takes to the air, and following a perfect arc, she slashes through the enemy troll’s poorly crafted leather chest plate.
-15 HP!
She botches the landing, still not used to her buster sword’s weight, and cartwheels to the right. A fiery explosion suddenly flings the mountain troll backwards.
-5 HP!
Glancing over her shoulder, Tamana watches Ryuk load another black marble into his magic slingshot. He pulls back and lets go. A blast at the troll’s hairy feet produces a cloud of dust and a scattering of debris.
“Both hands on the sword!” Ryuk shouts to her for the third time that afternoon. He pops off another black marble at the feet of the troll, causing more dust to obscure the air. Range isn’t an issue with his magic slingshot; it propels the marbles with magic, not elastic, and it self-adjusts for range.
This is a good thing, as Ryuk is utterly terrible with his new avatar.
Tamana is by his side moments later, the strands of her long white hair beating in the wind. “My attack looked cool though, right?” she asks.
He has to smile at this.
“You chose a much stronger avatar than I did,” he reminds her.
She winks at him. “You always were up for a challenge.”
They lock eyes for a moment longer than necessary.
A smaller troll, likely the bigger troll’s wench, flanks the two. Grimy dreadlocks cover her face and yellow man-bone jewelry clinks around her neck. She pauses, grunts, and charges.
Ryuk loses his footing and muffs his next shot. The marble explodes and a nearby bush bursts into flames.
Still holding her weapon incorrectly, Tamana side swipes her ironing board of a sword at the she-troll and manages to cut the wench’s hairy arm clean off at the elbow. The she-troll shrieks as her black blood jets into the air.
-39 HP! Critical hit!
The dust clears. “Doka duchaka!” Maddened with rage, the savage male troll charges at the two with his fists held high over his head.
“I’ve got this!” Ryuk procures a clear marble from the pocket on his belt, pulls back, and looses it.
What the … ?
The male troll freezes in place, his chiseled arms still held over his head. Ryuk glances back to Tamana to find that she’s also fixed in place, her tremendous sword held awkwardly in the ‘ready enough’ position at her side. Turning to the dying female troll, he gasps once he sees that the blood spraying from her arm is pixelated, it too frozen in midair. From the grass that was moments ago blowing in the wind, to a bead of sweat on the side of Tamana’s face – everything around him is completely stationary.
But I can still move, he thinks as he squeezes the handle of his slingshot.
Not knowing how long he has until time returns to its normal pace, Ryuk moves to the side of the alpha troll, takes a few steps back just to give himself some distance, reaches for a black marble and …
Time blazes ahead and the troll turns to him.
Taken off guard, Ryuk is seconds from being clobbered when the tip of Tamana’s buster sword pierces the creature’s chest, splashing oily black ichor onto Ryuk’s face.
Instakill!
The troll slumps forward and Tamana kicks his corpse off her buster sword. She keeps the troll’s blood on the blade as she turns to his smaller counterpart. One clean swipe and she finishes off the she-troll too.
-17 HP!
They are each awarded experience points and the guild coffers increase by about a hundred rupees. With a flick of his wrist, Ryuk checks their stats and swipes them away.
Ryuk Matsuzaki Level 2 Ballistics Mage
HP: 87/115
ATK: 40
DEF: 5
MATK: 51
MDF: 18
LUCK: 3
Tamana Nakamura Level 2 White Warrior
HP: 85/138
MANA: 68/79
ATK: 52
DEF: 19
MATK: 12
MDF: 38
LUCK: 3
“That was crazy ... ” Tamana wipes the digital sweat from her forehead. She stabs her bloodied sword into the soil, something she’s grown fond of doing since taking her new avatar. Glittery magic spirals around her hands as she lifts her arms into the air. A halo takes shape over her crown and a cloud forms over the two; iridescent snowflakes gently settle onto their heads and shoulders.
+45 HP!
“What did you do back there?” She asks, after they’ve healed up. “How did you freeze time? That’s, like, a level 30 spell or something!”
Ryuk shows her one of his clear marbles. “It’s these clear marbles. Like I told you, they’re wild cards.”
“You should have used more of those when we were leveling up earlier.” She shoots him one of her knowing smiles that he’s grown fond of over the years.
He shrugs her off. “I wanted to play it safe. I knew the black marbles were explosive, and they seemed the way to go.” He returns the clear marble to the pocket on his belt. “That was definitely cooler than I thought it would be. Next time, I’ll, um, do something a bit more productive when time freezes.”
The question he wants to ask is on the tip of his tongue.
He holds it there, decides to go for it, decides against it. Tamana and Ryuk had been gaming together for years. Ryuk wants something more and sometimes, he thinks that Tamana does too. One of the main reasons he’d agreed to re-roll, to become a resetter and start the game with a new avatar was to show her how committed he was to her.
Now he needed to say something about it. “Ahem … ”
Tamana’s smile fades as the thought of real world responsibilities spreads across her face. “I really need to log out now and take care of some homework. I keep pushing it off.”
Shit. He kicks a piece of rubble away. “Same here, but not homework – family.”
“You’re meeting your brother today?”
“Later today.”
Her eyes fill with concern. “Be careful, Ryuk.”
“You do the same.”
“My homework isn’t that dangerous!” With a laugh, she lifts her hand and the logout button appears, rimmed in glimmering gold. “See you soon.”
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
Ryuk pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, realizes he’s acting oddly, and looks up at her, away, and back again.
“What is it?”
He swallows hard. “Do you want to get dinner with me tomorrow night? I’d really like that.”
She shrugs him off. “Tomorrow night? Yeah, that’ll work. Same place? I love the miso ramen there.” Tamana cocks her head at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Dammit, Ryuk thinks, don’t be awkward!
“I mean, okay, how about I just come out and say it? Would that help?”
“You don’t like ramen?” she laughs. “I knew it! You never finish your bowl.”
“Not that.” Ryuk wipes his hands on his pant legs. “Okay here it is. I wanted to know if you’d like to go to a nicer place, some place more romantic.”
“More romantic?” Tamana turns away from him.
“Yes, like one of those Italian restaurants in Ginza. Or … ” He thinks as his face fills with blood. “Tokyo Sky Tree. Yes! We could have dinner there.”
Tamana gives him a curious look. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“No!” Ryuk shuffles his feet. “I mean, not exactly, um, yes exactly. Yes. Sure, let’s call it a date. What do you say?”
She gives him a warm smile and nods. “Let’s talk about it later. Bye, Ryuk.” With that, she presses the logout button and her avatar dematerializes.
To continue Fantasy Online Hyperborea, get it on Amazon here!
Table of Contents
Also by Harmon Cooper
Table of Contents
Map of Unigaea
Chapter One: Cliffhanger
Chapter Two: Loot and Scoot
The Last Warrior of Unigaea: A LitRPG Trilogy Page 19
